 Ni i wneud i ysgol shiitain. Eich namech eru, Ken McIntosh. I'm the Presiding Officer and it's my real pleasure to welcome you to this, the 2018 festival of politics. It's our 14th annual event and it's a chance for us to engage and to open the doors of your Parliament and to invite you in. I ask you not just to listen to politicians but hopefully to offer your opinions. gan gael gael i mewn. Felly those of you who are minded to do so, we are broadcasting this live on Facebook, but those who are minded to do so please tweet in or Facebook on hashtag FOP2018. That is Festival of Politics, hashtag nodding, as you know what that means. Hashtag FOP2018. Felly, agonwyno i ddau ffoblion i ddau, a ddau yn ffrindu'r ddisguedd neu ddffwrdd – ddau yn y lleol iawn. Aeth yng Nghymru y ddau sy'n iawn i ddau – mae'n nwgau'r drosesau ar ardal. Felly, ni fydd yn oeddo i ei geoliadau ddau a'n mynd i ddau, a fyddwn ni fydd yn ei gwylliant i ni'r ddau cael ei fferddau i ddau Michael Heseltine, a'r gweld yn gofynol yn cael ei ddau y ddau. wedi gweld Const bueno sydd gennych gyfio ar gyffredinol. The son of a Welsh Colonel, Lord Hezeltine, was born in Swansea, educated Oxford, where he studied philosophy, politics and economics, and prior to politics, Michael Hezeltine established what would become the now multi million pound haymarket media group. His stellar political career began serving under Edward Heath as a junior minister in in the early 1970s, before joining Margaret Thatcher's cabinet in 1979 to become the advocate for regeneration following the Brixton and Liverpool Toxeth riots of 1981. Posts as Secretary of State for Environment and Defence led to roles as First Secretary of State and Deputy Prime Minister and President of the Board of Trade in the Government of John Major. Lord Heseltine has been a member of the House of Lords since July 2001, when he received a life peerage. Since then, he has continued to cause ripples and storms in the political world with his comments on the Brexit referendum. A long time supporter of the euro and a remainder, Lord Heseltine was let go from a number of governmental advisory roles in 2017 after rebelling over the article 50 legislation in the House of Lords. Earlier this year, he has quoted as saying, "...we have turned ourselves from the fastest growing to the slowest growing economy in Europe, and we have made a complete horlicks of the Irish border." He is of the opinion that the matter must return to Parliament and possibly a referendum or general election. Lord Heseltine is married to Anne with three children and nine grandchildren, and outwith politics, Lord Heseltine devotes much of his time to continuing to renovate the 70 acres of grounds surrounding his Thenford house, where, among its ponds and 13,000 varieties of plants, there is a massive bust of Lenin, rescued from the former Soviet Union at the end of the Cold War, or so I am assured. So I am delighted to introduce the right honourable Lord Michael Heseltine. We are going to open this to questions. At any point, if you wish to ask a question or make a point, just put up your hand or catch my eye and I will bring you in. But if I can, before turning to contemporary matters, I wonder if I might start just at the beginning. In your autobiography, which I was pleased to read, you obviously had a very, talk of a very comfortable, very secure early childhood, but you did not particularly enjoy moving or going to boarding school at Shrewsbury, is that right, or why was that? Well actually, the first experience, I was in boarding school for the first time in Northern Ireland during the war, my father was stationed there, and that was, I liked that, and then I was sent to another boarding school when my father moved from Northern Ireland, and I ran away. We plotted the whole form, I think I played a role in organising the whole form we're going to run away. Anyway, the great afternoon came, and only two of us were up for it, so we did a whip round, every penny that any boy had got we collected because we were the pioneers who needed to finance this exploit. We made a manful job of it, and we got about a mile away from the school, we were doing extremely well, so we got to the main road to Swansea, and we summed the lift. It was the headmaster. My parents took me away, and I then went to another school which I loved, and then after that Shrewsbury. That didn't work, there was no escape from it, looking at my CV at the end of my time at Shrewsbury, I was a washout, I had achieved absolutely zilch. I have to be frank, I thought that was a rather harsh judgment, and I suppose you could argue I spent the last 70 years trying to prove that it was a harsh judgment. It's probably fair to say that in your biography again you talk about going to Oxford University and particularly becoming president of the Oxford Union, and that was really the formative shaping of your political career. Was that when your politics came from or were the seeds of your politics already planted before you went to Oxford? I got a letter from someone who taught me maths at the age of seven who said oh I always knew you'd become a politician, and at Shrewsbury I did speak in the debating society, but those are sort of acorns that perhaps were planted, but I had no knowledge of that, and I do remember very vividly as I sit here now, I can see it, the day I joined the Conservative Party, and it was in October of 1951 at the beginning of the election campaign of that year, and I was walking down one of the main streets of Swansea to meet friends for coffee, and I saw this hoarding on the other side of the road, Henry Kirby, a Conservative candidate for Swansea West, I crossed the road and said can I help, and ten days later I went up to Oxford, and my first day in the university I joined the University Conservatives Association, the City of Oxford Conservatives Association and the Oxford Union. That demonstrates beyond per adventure that something in me was heading for politics. Although your first experience of being elected to office was the President of the Union, you ended up having to stay on an extra term at university to achieve that, is that right? Yes, my course was a three year course, and in the summer term of the third year I was elected as president, and I had to stay for an extra term in order to fulfil that. It was not without precedent, but it was unusual. I like the fact that the main base of your campaign was turning the basement into a nightclub, and that was how you got the votes. Yes, but I think there's a lesson in this. In my view, in life, there are two sorts of people, and it's a dramatic over generalisation. There are trenches and there are the advances. If there's a debate or a discussion of choice, people divide into those who say be careful, watch it, cut back. We're over trading in business terms, cut back to get rid of some people and reduce the commitment, withdraw, look down. I'm not one of those. I'm on the other side of the argument. You've got a problem, sort it, go for it. Go back to the Oxford Union. We had falling membership, and so the argument was cut the expenditure. I said no. Falling membership because we're not attractive to enough undergraduates. We're going to change that, and we're going to have a better restaurant facility. We're going to have closed circuit television, which was technological revolution of the time. We're going to turn the coal sellers into a nightclub, and we'll build the membership. I led that campaign, and it was triumphant. I got elected president. Just to give you a feel for it, the restaurant was four course lunch for two and sixpence, and a five course dinner for three and sixpence. On each of those menus, there was always a fish course. One day I said to the chef, chef, this is very interesting. I read your menus, and I take part in them all the time. We have soul, we have halibut, we have place, we have bril, we have salmon, and all that. But didn't I look at the bills? It's always cod. Ah, he said, president, it's how you carve it. Right. I'll remember that now. You touched there about your approach to business, and the key, although clearly your political interests were already alive at that stage, you actively pursued a career first on property and then in publishing. And that was very important to you politically in later years. It gave you the independence to, for example, to be a backbencher after you walked out of cabinet in the 80s and to support yourself during what you call the wilderness years. Did that whole period of this period of your early life, did it influence you politically in terms of being an interventionist politician about your attitude to trade unions, to privatisation and so on? Well, I think there was a form, if I can slightly, I come back to your question, but there is a very important to me moment in that period of my life. And basically, I got a degree at Oxford, and I was going to be a chartered accountant. And basically, with a degree, you had to do another three years, and the going rate for someone in that situation was £3 a week. The firm to which I went wanted to attract graduates, and so they decided to punt, and they offered £7 a week, which is what I earned when I left Oxford in 1951. And my peer group of graduates at that time were earning £12 to £13 a week. So I was only halfway able to afford what my peer group of friends could afford. But I had £1,000, which my grandparents, I had a post office savings book, and there it was over 15 years, three and six, two in tuppence, ten shillings, whatever it was, £1,000. So I said, that's fine, £7 a week, £1,000 over three years, £300 a year, £6 a week, £6 plus the seven, £13, the equal spending power of my peer group. And then the magic moment, inexplicable, unpredictable, but I won't have £1,000. So I found another friend who had £1,000, and we bought a boarding house, and that had 11 runes. We occupied two, sublet the other nine, and we lived like kings. And a year and a half later, we sold it for double what we paid for it. I was on the property ladder, and I was beginning to understand the entrepreneurial opportunities of independence, and I had £2,000. You see, you lived like kings, it was built up of a tube station, I think, you had to... Oh, well, no, that was the next step. With the double money from the boarding house, we bought a... The boarding house had 11 rooms, we bought a 44-bedroom hotel. Oh, thank God. And I was working in the city as an article clerk, then coming back with a paintbrush and all that sort of stuff. But this hotel had one characteristic, which was very noticeable. It was over the central line, tube station, tube. And it was, of course, basically safe quite a long way down. But every 10 minutes, and the trick was, you had to get the customer into the hotel and signed up before the whole building started going up and down. Anyway, we sold that quite a profit as well. And then you went from property into publishing, and that's... Another luck, another piece of luck. I was standing at the telephone exchange. Yes, we had telephone exchanges in those days, you know, plugs in for the rooms. And the phone went, and it was a friend of mine from Oxford who said, Michael, I've bought a business. And I'd like your advice. I said, fine, I'll get a cab. And I got in the cab, and he showed me this business, and it consisted of a booklet which was called Oxford University What's What. And basically, it was a two-and-sixpony book for undergraduates coming up to university, and it listed all the things and all the times and all the addresses of all the diversions that were available, the cinemas, the restaurants, and all that sort of stuff. Tucked into the back of it was a loose insert called the Directory of Opportunities for Graduates, and it consisted of 16 pages of display advertising. Shell, the greatest company in the world, will employ graduates. BP, Even Better Careers, Rolls Royce, this is where you want to work, £40, 16 pages of advertising. And I said to Clive, I said, this is madness. No undergraduate coming up here as a freshman is going to be trying to work out their careers in three years' time. What you should do, I said, is to take this idea and give it away free of charge to every last year undergraduate in the country. He said, oh, I like that idea. Why don't you join me? I was in publishing. And the revenue went from the year in which I suggested the change from £16,000 to £64,000 the next year. Now, £64,000, you've probably got a multiplied by 30 to get a feel for today's money values. I was in publishing. And one thing led on, property on the one hand, publishing on the other. And today it is the Haymarket Publishing Group. And you maintained that throughout your parliamentary career, you tried to juggle them both at one stage, but then you had to sort of step back, is that right? Well, I had wonderful colleagues, and when I left to become a minister, of course, you have to distance yourself from the operations of your business. But I had three colleagues who ran it in my absence very successfully. So, while this was going on, you hadn't obviously lost interest far from it in pursuing a political career. And you first successfully stood for Tavistock in 1966. That was the first seat. The first candidature was Gower in South Wales, a safe Labour seat. And then the marginal Labour seat of Coventry North. And then in 1965 I was selected for Tavistock, a Tory seat in the west country. Gower was the one where you went along to heckle an Iron Reven, isn't it? One of the great moments of my life. If you fight a safe Labour seat, you believe you're going to win it. I know it's mad, I know you should keep your feet on the ground, but all your supporters say, oh, we've not had a fight like this, you're the guy that's going to do it. I heard in the pub last night they're all coming your way. All this is complete rubbish, but that's what you hear. Anyway, no one came near my meetings. There were no meetings. There were no Conservatives in the mining valleys of South Wales. So, one night, one day, I saw this advertisement in the South Wales Evening Post, Labour Party of South Wales, Elysium Cinema, 10 o'clock Sunday the 10th of October. The Right Honourable, a Niren Bevan, one of the giants of the day, will address the Labour Party. Well, they wouldn't come to my meetings, so I'll go to theirs. In the dark, in the rain, serried ranks of the Labour Party. Third balcony of the Elysium Cinema Swansea. Lights go down, Labour Members of Parliament come in with the giant in the middle, and Niren got up to introduce Dymort, Labour Member of Parliament for Swansea West, Di Williams, Labour Member of Parliament for Swansea East. And here we have the candidate for Gaher, I for Davis. Whereupon, from the third balcony, the back of this Elysium Cinema Swansea, a voice was said, you have both the candidates for Gaher here tonight. And Niren crouched over the microphone. Ah, he said, I hear the voice of an Englishman. And that is how, in the never had it's a good election campaign of 1959, I turned a Labour majority of 17,641 into a Labour majority of 25,900. So, you didn't let that put you off and you were elected for Tavistock and then in the under Edward Heath, in the, this was a Harold Wilson Government under Edward Heath 1970s administration. He brought you into his administration as a junior minister. Yes, in environment. In environment. What do you remember of that? Because looking back now, this was a time when, this was obviously the time when Britain joined the common market. But just reading your book, Europe didn't seem to be as divisive an issue then, perhaps as it is now. It was more a time of industrial discontent, of the oil price rising and so on. Ah, well, you have to go, certainly Europe was divisive, but nothing like as divisive. And you have then to have an understanding of European history. You have to know of the Franco-Prussian War, of the First World War, of the Second World War and the enormous determination of the men and women of the prisoner of war camps and the resistance movements under that simple, simple dynamic. It must never happen again. That's where the European movement came from. It was a political movement to stop a thousand years in which generation after generation of Scottish people of British people were sent to die on the continent of Europe. The first manifestation was the Schuman plan, which was to take supranational control of the three great war-making industries, iron, coal and steel. We didn't join. Following that, there was the European community, which led to the Treaty of Rome, which of course we didn't sign. And that was a political decision to bring supranational partnership shared sovereignty to this warring continent of ours. In my lifetime, my Oxford career, the three concentric circles of Commonwealth, the special relationship with America and our friendship with Europe were the faith and the philosophy in which my Oxford life fructified. So, nothing has changed. We have preserved peace in Europe since 1945, an unprecedented period. We have shared sovereignty on a scale without human experience. We have got rid of the fascists, got rid of the colonels in Greece. We are 28 parliamentary democracies living in peace. Yes, endless fudges, endless compromises, Henry argument, but you have that here in Scotland. You have it in every local authority. You have it in every parish. You have it in every family. The issue is how do you resolve these matters by killing each other or by dialogue? Dialogue is more boring, but it is a better way to do it. And so that faith, which every Prime Minister in my party has told me about, argued for, created a vision of, has been the backdrop in which my faith in a shared sovereignty with Europe has become a central feature of my political instinct and judgment. Now, nobody died in the internal conservative wars, but Edward Heath was followed by Mrs Thatcher, which did mark a shift. You did not vote for Mrs Thatcher for leader. You had misgivings even from the start, I believe, about your leadership, but she appointed you to her cabinet. Yes, well, she wanted to sack me. Just before we leave it, you may not come back to it. Margaret shared more sovereignty in Europe than any Prime Minister in the history of this country, in the Single European Act. But she wasn't instinctively a European. She didn't trust them, didn't like them, thought the French were devious and the Germans were dangerous. But nevertheless, she faced with the reality, looking at the reincarnation of the common agricultural policy, which we didn't join, with the single market where she felt that the French and Germans would fix the rules in our absence if we didn't join, she signed. And that was the biggest sharing of sovereignty in the history of this nation. So, but go back now to Margaret herself. I didn't get on well with her. And that's nothing no big deal, you know, your colleagues, you're not friends. And so she wanted to sack me. She thought of me as one of the Ted Heath's wets, I think, or interventions. I don't really know what she thought, but she wanted to sack me. It all appeared in the economist Peter Walker had to go, Paul Shannon had to go, I had to go. But unfortunately for this, they did go. But unfortunately, the day the axe was to fall, I was by this time a front bench spokesman opposing Edward Ben and some of his industrial nationalisation proposals. And when she came to call in the three who were going, one of her colleagues said, leader, we have a bit of a problem here. Because at two o'clock, you are appearing on a platform with Heseltine in front of 2000 small business people in Westminster Hall. And then he's opening for the opposition against Edward Ben's nationalisation of aircraft and ship building legislations. But you can sack him, we could get someone to stand in. But she didn't. And then I made the first of those party conference speeches. And then I was unsackable. So I survived. And people misunderstand, I made the point about colleagues not friends. But Margaret then put me into the toughest, most difficult, most exposed jobs that she had to deal with. Who was it who had to sell the council houses? Me. Who was it who had to take on the CND and the nuclear disarmament? Me. And so, although there was no personal relationship of the sort that you can have in politics, but the collegiate relationship worked perfectly well. I mean, I could go on and give you many examples of how she actually praised what I was doing. But she promoted me. This is the important point from being housing environment secretary in 79 to defence secretary at the second big electoral issue in the second general election. Before we get on to that, just as environment secretary, you were given responsibility for leading on regeneration. I mentioned it earlier, this is following the race riots of 81, which were very difficult time for the country and I think for the government in particular. Do you see your own efforts in that? Do you look back on that as one of your biggest successes, your steps in regeneration in the universities? Yes, but the history is not quite as you put it. What you have said is what people tend to believe, but it's not the way it was. I became environment secretary in 79 and I was appalled by the dereliction in the east end of London, where there were 6,000 acres where the docks had gone, the public utilities had gone, all that had been built for council houses and the emptiness and the dereliction, and the younger generation of families had left their parents behind, but they'd gone too to the new towns and the suburbs. And so I began the process of regeneration using the concept of a new town corporation called it an urban development corporation, took over responsibility for planning land assembly and that public private sector partnership. In 79, there were technical reasons why you can't just do one place like London, it becomes what's known as hybrid legislation. So in order to overcome the hostility of my civil servants, I said we'll take general powers, where's the second worst place? And they said Liverpool, I said fine, we'll do development corporation in Liverpool as well. I also did the garden festivals, you had one in Glasgow here. That was 1979 where we began it. And the third thing that happened in 79 is that Peter Shaw, my predecessor was a Labour cabinet minister, had created partnerships with the more impoverished areas of the country and he put a minister in charge of trying to help these local authorities. He himself did Liverpool. I inherited that and kept it and I moved a grant mechanism which Peter Walker had created to get rid of the coal chips and the ore and iron ore deposits in the countryside and green the fields. I took that grant mechanism into creating clean areas, green areas out of derelict building sites. In 79, in 81, two years later, they rioted in Liverpool and I went to Margaret and I said look, there's a classic easy response, particularly on the right wing of politics. It's all the jobs on the streets, back the police and I said look, I think this is more difficult and I want to do something different. I want to take leave of absence effectively from my department and walk the streets of Liverpool which I did. She agreed. That was when I became, for the first time, I think realistically, involved in really understanding how local government worked and how the mechanism of Whitehall with its divisiveness and its separativeness was not compatible with tackling the challenges of urban deprivation and social impoverishment. I have to just explain because this was so formative in my life. I've explained to you how I got there. I wanted to listen. We never listen. Politics never come. We don't care with all that stuff. You know what they say. So I turn up in Liverpool. Hello Secretary of State, what are you doing here? Well, I've come to listen. I'm shocked by the riots. I want to hear what's going on. I want to get under the skin of it all. Very good Secretary of State. Day two, same arguments. Day three, same arguments. Round the streets, a lot of photographs. Day four, some journalists did what they always do. Secretary of State, you've been here now three or four days. What are you doing now? And I realised that to go on saying, I'm listening. I couldn't get out of the city. If I'd stayed a week, I would have every journalist. So I began to and I realised something else. And many of you who understand politics and are interested will identify with this because there was one thing that everybody said when I listened to them. We know what's wrong, they said. You, him, her, them. What no one said is, I know what's wrong and I want to do something about it. You'll all identify that phenomenon in life. Him, her, them, whatever. And so not only had I run out of arguments about listening, but I hadn't anything to put in its place. But I knew what was wrong. There was no one with any sense of leadership. So I thought, well, I'd better do something about it. And when I finished that immediate phase of three weeks, I had produced a list. Of 30 things that I thought could happen, which would show that Liverpool had a future. That they could solve their own problems. That they could work together. They could create partnerships that people locally could matter. And we produced the list. But of course, producing the list in that climate, in that vacuum, nothing would have happened. So I thought, well, I'd better do something about it. And so I had the list. I created a team of public, private sector officials and secondees. And every Thursday I turned up for dinner. And every, I had a loose leaf page, 30 pages. I went through, every page was a scheme. I went through every one every Thursday. What progress? Good, not so good. Friday I dealt with the not so good. And then I went home again and back the next Thursday. And so I effectively was the clerk of works for the renaissance of one of Britain's great cities. And that's where the whole experience was born and how it was born. And the secretary of the cabinet, Robert Armstrong of the time, vividly described later, years later, he said, when you and your team came back, you were like people possessed. As though you've suddenly seen some great light. It sounds a lot of dramatic this, but that's how we felt. We had become completely immersed in this incredible and vastly exciting challenge. Mrs. Thatcher and the cabinet packed you in all this, but... Well, it didn't stop me, is the truth. Because I produced a report for them and it was called, It Took a Riot. And I knew what I was doing when I chose that title. Because that was the one thing everybody said. You're only here because it took a riot, didn't you? And they were right. It was why I was there. So I wrote the report and I outlined what I thought should happen. Well, fortunately, as Secretary of State for the Department of Environment, I had a huge budget, largely housing. So if you've got billions which a housing budget amounts to, taking the odd million away from housing and spending it on a renovation scheme, whatever it is, it doesn't show and you can make much better use of the money. So money was not my problem. The problem was to make things happen and give people the faith and actually to get others to do it because my time was not going to be spent doing that. So the cabinet gave me very little money, very little support, but fortunately, the job I had was self-sustaining in that capacity and I was able to do it without outside support. You touched just there about one of the divisions at that time within the Conservative Party, the Conservative Government. That was between the Thatcherites and what she called the Wets. Did you regard yourself as a Wet? You were a Wet. No. I remember vividly the... I was never on either side. My position then and ever since is this country over consumes and under invests. And if I have a criticism, which I do of the Thatcher philosophy, they had the incredible windfall of North Sea Oil and basically it was spent on consumer boom. And one manifestation of that was the mortgage interest tax relief, which has long since gone, which subsidized in my view house prices. I got rid of that, but in selling the council houses, what I also did was to get a commitment that three quarters of the money that came from the selling council houses would go into building new social houses. That lasted till I left to become defence secretary. But I also created, and this is hardly known, I recreated the private rented sector, which has made a huge social contribution to mobility and social housing. So in some ways, my policy would have been less popular because I wanted the money to go into investment to create a sovereign wealth fund, for example. And too much of it went into the public personal consumption. So at the time, and just because, as I said, trying to get to the roots of your fallout in the end with Margaret Thatcher's Prime Minister, you agreed with her on many policies on privatisation on the trade unions at the time and so on. So was it more than just a class of personal styles that you didn't like her impetuosity, didn't like her sort of headmistress like manner? I actually, I think I privatise more of the public sector than any other Conservative minister. I think obviously the council has sales, but there was the coal industry, the nuclear industry, the national physical laboratory and a range of other things that I privatised. I certainly led the opposition to one labour proposal after another to nationalise something, the aircraft and shipbuilding nationalisation, which led to the MACE incident. I stopped the nationalisation of the ports. So my credentials within the Conservative Party are alpha class when it comes to that. On the trade unions, I would have been and would remain completely supportive of what the Conservatives did in 1979. The winter of discontent, which destroyed the Callaghan Government, was the end of the producer dominating influence of the trade unions. I happen to believe, just to throw it in, that the nationalisation of the commanding heights of the economy in the 1940s under Mr Attlee was one of the economic disasters of post-war Britain because it took the commanding heights of our economy out of the competitive world and out of international competition and challenge. That set back our economic recovery. So I am absolutely down the line, straight orthodox Conservative on these dramatic issues. On the European issue, which I think is where your question was heading. Well, just really just to find out where you, because Europe came later, perhaps it did, it was there all the time, but is this still to get the bottom of why you and Mr Stathford didn't get on at all? Yes. Well, you have to, you can't use the words, don't get on at all. I've tried to make this point that as colleagues she, well I know she ranked me highly. I ran the departments in the way that she admired. I reduced public expenditure in public employment in my department. I got rid of more crangos than Keith Joseph. So I mean I had all the street cred that would be part of her approach to life. But to understand the issue that led to my resignation, it was a question of what is the right of a cabinet minister in a parliamentary democracy? So this is the Westland affair. I think many of us will probably remember Westland, but just for those who don't because Westland was a helicopter company. Yes. And you had rival bids, American and European. Yes. What happened is that Westland, which is Britain's only helicopter manufacturing company, was in financial trouble, and that is the responsibility of the Department of Trade and Industry. I was defence secretary, and most of the year in which the DTI was trying to grapple with Westland's finances, I was negotiating what turned out to be the biggest international deal Britain ever did, which was the German, Italian, Spanish, British Eurofighter deal, a typhoon it's called today, which succeeded the tornado, which was a tripod idea. And I created that deal, which was hugely beneficial to British industry. And Leon, Britain, who was defence secretary, asked if I would help with the Westland issue, because I knew all the defence contractors of Europe who would I negotiate this big deal with. And so I said, fine. And I went off to the defence industries of Europe and my political colleagues in Europe. And I said, look, there's a chance we can do something here. We've just done the typhoon deal. And they agreed. And they came up and I helped them with a deal which was led by GEC and British Aerospace and the four European countries. And they enabled me to go to colleagues and say, look, you can have a deal based upon a British and a European model. At the same time, UTC, Sikorsky, the American helicopter giant, were trying to sell to my department, the defence ministry of helicopter called the Black Hawk. And all the briefing to me as defence secretary is that we don't want this. If the specification is wrong, we do not want the Black Hawk helicopter. So first, I had no requirement for it. And secondly, I promised Leon to see what I could do. And I had a proposal endorsed by my three, four defence secretaries of Europe. Margaret called a small meeting of ministers most involved, perfectly legitimate means of government. And she was in favour of Sikorsky. She lost. So she said, very well, we will call a meeting of the economic committee of the cabinet. That is the biggest subcommittee of the cabinet and it's virtually the cabinet. And she lost. And the conclusion of that meeting is that my proposal should be given a fair scrutiny. And she, in a rather intemperate conclusion of the meeting, she said, very well, we will meet again on Friday when the stock markets have closed and we will resolve this matter. I was satisfied. I had been given every chance by my colleagues. My colleagues had supported me and it was going to cabinet. And that was the conclusion that I think it was a Friday if I remember that this meeting took place. The meeting for the final occasion was to be fixed and colleagues were notified and then it was cancelled. And so I raised the issue in cabinet and she wouldn't let me. Now the choice that any of you would have to make and I had to make, I had negotiated in good faith with my European defence ministers. I had got two major British contactors in the deal and as defence secretary, defence secretary, I am being denied the opportunity having one on two previous occasions with colleagues to put the matter to colleagues in cabinet. And I won't go into the minutiae in detail, but that was the dilemma. And I took the view then, I take the view now that no self-respecting defence secretary could allow himself or herself to be so treated that I could never have held any respect with any of my European colleagues again if I had allowed myself to have been humiliated in such a way and don't have any illusions. The press briefing from number 10 would have been very simple. A man of straw made all this fuss but actually it comes to it, he didn't really make a fuss at all, he just bowed down and went quietly. If you want to be defence secretary with that reputation that's all right, but don't ask me to do that. And so I left and it's always been a great sadness to me that I left. You walked out in the middle of the meeting. Yes, well I walked out in the middle of the meeting because and this is getting into the detail, but it just compounds the problem. Margaret had a handbag here. Prime ministers basically are brilliantly briefed by the civil service. They know exactly what the arguments are in every department and they will have summarised for the prime minister who was going to say what. And then they will say and prime minister there are probably three summings conclusions that are available to you in the circumstances and they will set them out. I can see it now. Margaret didn't stick with the three conclusions. She produced a scrappy piece of paper out of her handbag and she read out the conclusion which was that this conversation between the public debate has got to end and any questions that are put about this to any member of the cabinet but particularly Leon on Michael must be referred to the cabinet secretary before they are answered. And I said does that mean prime minister that if I am asked the same question that I was asked three days ago and I answered in the terms I did if I'm asked that same question tomorrow by a journalist I have to say I'll let you know and ask for Robert Armstrong's guidance about answer. Well we have a very sophisticated press and everybody anybody will know what would have happened. Number 10 would have said he's bust. You go and ask the same question and I'll tell you we won't answer it because we've shut him up. So you're shut up and you haven't been allowed to put your case to cabinet and when I heard that conclusion and her reply that it applies to questions you were asked yesterday as well as future questions I said I can't with honor stay in this cabinet. That is my view in 1986. It is my view today and do I regret. Well I regret it hugely. Did I make the right judgment. I made the only judgment. Now I'm conscious that I'm asking all the questions here and so please do catch my eye and I'll try and stop just looking at Michael if you want to come in. But this obviously went to a different period than in your career because you went to the back benches and you became I think what we in Scotland would call that the king across the water, referring to the jack-of-bite cause. So you became the source. So you became the focus for many who became either fed up or disenchanted with his thatcher. I believe at this point well you can tell me whether or not we you were you planning plotting even for a future because at this point you I believe it sounds Shakespearean but I believe these words are yours. He who wields the dagger never wears the crown. Those aren't pounding my words. I'm very proud of them. I actually thought they were Shakespeare's but but but I certainly use them and I believe they were Shakespeare's but now in the light of the history people tell me that Shakespeare never did use those words and so I stand up and be counted. They were mine. They're used currently of course about another blonde hair charismatic politician who's trying to assassinate a prime minister. That is something I'd noticed. So I mean you stood against in the end although you said this you know he who wields a dagger never wears a crown. In the end you did stand against Mrs Thatcher and and brought about her resignation. I did and the first time she was challenged was Anthony Mayer of North Flint one of the Flint seats I think. I played no part in that. I kept well away from it. She should have seen the writing on the wall but I did nothing and then Geoffrey Howe resigned and made that momentous speech in the House of Commons. I was sitting just behind him when he did it but now Geoffrey was a very good friend of mine and but I knew nothing of his preparations but his plans to resign or anything of that sort but of course he then ended with those words which you would imagine the effect on me sitting just behind him this electric atmosphere in the House of Commons it is now for others to determine which way to take this matter forward and I thought oh my god curious enough very interesting that judgment was wrong. Geoffrey was not thinking of me he was thinking of the cabinet and I believe this absolutely and I was told by someone who was very close to Geoffrey that so I misjudged that but it doesn't matter the public didn't the journalists didn't misjudge it they thought this is this is has a time this is this is the moment what are you going to do and so I well after Geoffrey's speech House emptied I went out this everybody else and I passed Michael Jopling who was another friend of mine had been a chief whip um and I said Michael what the hell do I do now and he said you do nothing you'll be leader of the opposition in 18 months and I said I don't want to be leader of the opposition and you know come as the man in a moment come as the man you have to stand up and be counted somebody you know what would have happened I don't know but I I do believe that the thing had got to the point where Margaret was not going to win the next election you've got to remember I need to say this in Scotland the poll tax had nearly destroyed the Tory party and I when I was in 1979 flashback I had to find a replacement for the rates and one of the options was a poll tax and if the first thought makes the poll tax quite attractive you know we all pay we all vote we are responsible until you look at the detail and it means that someone with my background of my money my gardeners pay the same as I do and that's the end of the argument uh so I persuaded the cabinet not to do the poll tax and that was that uh Margaret went back in after when I became defensive it put Willie Whitelaw in to try and resurrect the poll tax and um he came the same conclusion and it wasn't until the rating revaluation in Scotland I think about 1985 I remember 86 something like that that Margaret came up came back with a poll tax in Scotland and um that was the disaster it then became the poll tax in England that was catastrophic and so by the time we got to 1990 I was involved in two things well first of all was the the European debate and secondly getting rid of the poll tax and um that that basically was the platform on which I stood now in that time I'm going to fast forward because what happened then of course was that you stood against Margaret just Margaret thought she'd just by herself and one enough to take it to the second round but John Major came in with Douglas Hurd and eventually became Prime Minister but he brought you back into cabinet and and David Cameron did two later on or to come back into government but John Major immediately ran into difficulties over Europe and there's a very interesting note right at the end of your book where you talk about advising John Major to try and reach a compromise with the Eurosceptics in which he came up with a form of words promising a parliamentary a referendum in the next parliament and is that something you regret biggest mistake in my life upon my political life John who was a very collegiate leader and um he had a lot of trouble with the Eurosceptics not on the same scale as today I mean I've forgotten what it was a dozen nine ten something of that sort um but but they were a problem to him and he was trying to find an accord and he thought that the referendum the promise of a referendum would heal the divide he had support for that but Ken Clark and myself were implacably opposed and um I was deputy prime minister by now and John was raised the subject with us quite frequently and we wouldn't move and then one night John invited us to his room in the commons and raised the subject again and I know exactly what I felt and what I thought I was deputy prime minister he'd made me his deputy and I saw my job then as to support him in any way I practically could and in order to do that it was absolutely essential that we were like that if the press could have found a glimmer of light between us first of all I would have had no authority because the moment it was there people would know that they could go behind my back to him and that would rapidly become the subject in journalists and that this guy doesn't really matter my colleagues every time they didn't like something I said would immediately say well we'll talk to the prime minister so I'm completely clear in my mind there's a deputy prime minister there would not be a glimmer of light between John and myself so that if I said to a cabinet colleague I think we ought to do this or that they would know don't waste your time going to the prime minister Heseltown's already been there and so we're now back with that with the the referendum and we were facing the issue of the euro which was not on the agenda in John's government period there was no question of us deciding or not deciding indeed we had decided not to decide but of course the hypothesis existed what about after the election and this is where I made that terrible mistake motivated I no doubt by my torn loyalties hatred of the referendum loyalty to John and I remember saying in that meeting John was there Ken was there Ken I said look do you think that we could agree that we would say in the election campaign that in the event of us winning the election and in the event of us then wanting to join the euro there will be a referendum and Ken said yes and both of us believe it was the worst decision of our political life and I believe that profoundly now John made the announcement all the qualifications were swept out of the window European referendum and from that moment on the right wing had got the initiative so that is how it happened and um I'm sorry well which gives us a chance because I'll be honest with brexit is dominating discussions in this parliament and you know it's dominating discussions a Westminster and I'm sure our audience would want to ask you questions about this because we're clearly in a dilemma where do you see it you you believe you you've stepped down from these positions or you were let go from these government positions because you think there should be a meaningful vote do you think that vote should be a vote in the parliament in the house of parliament or do you think it should be a referendum again a second referendum well only only when much reason may sack me I voted for a meaningful vote in the house of commons now she's already promised that so she hasn't called me back but there you are that's life the um but I think it certainly there needs to be a meaningful vote in the house of commons um but that could be a situation where that doesn't lead to a conclusion or to a negative conclusion um and so I I believe that the and I believe this from day one after the referendum and when I said it at the time in print we either need a general election or we need another referendum I believe the people were conned I believe that the the case for the referendum was built on lies and I think that public opinion is changing but at the moment nobody knows what leaving means isn't there is no use asking anybody because nobody knows I read in the newspapers tonight that we may see a deal on Wednesday the cabinet is going to be told on Tuesday I don't it's true or not but this is what's all over the news now today but so what you learn from that is that no one knows because the deal hasn't yet been agreed the cabinet hasn't been told and what you do know is there's a sporting chance that if the Europeans like it 40 or 50 conservative MPs will vote against it so what does Brexit mean and I don't know what it means except that Britain is leaving the top table of European power politics that's really my preoccupation that it's our single market it is our home base it is where our power over centuries has lied and we are not going to be there so who talks for Europe well it will be the german chancellor and I have used the words they lost the war and they won the peace and I can't live with that as a British politician I think you've said recently as well that in a choice between the lesser of two evils brexit versus a Jeremy Corbyn led government you actually think that brexit is the worst option for somebody who's campaign against Labour politics all your life this is the nightmare question you know no it is it is the nightmare question and I have a cop out a cop out I don't have a vote and that's the most dishonest answer because of course I may not have a vote but do I have an opinion and there isn't any doubt whatsoever that brexit is a long-term calamitous disaster for this country Jeremy Corbyn is a short-term calamitous perimeter now we've got kind of put your hand up here I'm going to turn we've got facebook live so I've got some questions coming up here but if you want to participate you're the live audience you've actually paid your money to come in here so put your money your hand up can I just ask you by the way because I was mentioning Boris Johnson earlier I mean Boris Johnson actually took inherited your seat in Henley with your endorsement not really my endorsement I wasn't consulted but I I'm not I I let me say it once I'm not in any way critical of John Boris as Member of Parliament for Henley or as Mayor of London and I like Boris he makes me laugh well don't underestimate that that is Boris the secret he makes everybody laugh but but let's he won London twice that was him he is he was a bigger figure than the Conservative Party now you now move on for reasons which I'm afraid I find dubious he threw himself into the leadership of the brexit campaign I think that was personal ambition I think it was opportunist and I could never condone it but you know I'm not I don't find it necessary to hate my political opponents indeed I would say and it's self-evident I mean one of the most emotional moments of my life is when the Labour Mayor of Liverpool offered me the freedom of the city and there's it wasn't a Tory councillor I mean you know but I spend most of a lot of my political life working with my opponents in urban regeneration and politics doesn't hardly ever come to we were there to try and do something to solve the people's problems in these rather difficult urban problems and and so I don't find it necessary to to hate people who disagree with last night Ann and I were with a friend of mine Jeremy Isaacs who commemorating another friend of mine Anthony Howard they were both Labour chairman of the Oxford University Labour club when we were with Oxford together and we were celebrating that event last night so you know that the Labour MPs I don't like I have to say it with some hesitation there have been occasional Conservative MPs I don't like but on balance I like them all I do and ask a personal question about the Prime Minister Theresa May but do you think that she is in a position to take us through this Brexit issue at the moment? Well she's in a position to do it technically I have to say yes to that because she is Prime Minister whether she can if your technical question means how she got the majority very probably not what they tell me is that there I saw it in one of the papers I think that 30 Labour MPs are going to vote with a Conservative Government to push this through well I'll believe it when I see it it's not the way oppositions behave oppositions go for the jugular and I should be very interested to see which 30 Labour MPs are prepared to say to their constituency activists look we could have done this beaten the government we could have had as they will see it and election and all that sort of stuff but we'd rather keep the Tories in power well maybe that's what's going to happen but it's not what I'd be backing betting on if it was my money isn't that the issue that party loyalties are getting in the way of resolving Brexit but that is that is politics you know that I mean I the the majority of Tory MPs in the House of Commons today are against Brexit they have campaigned for every Prime Minister in my memory who advised the Britain self-interest depending upon our European sovereignty sharing but they have to away their careers their constituency activists their party above all else now I tell you I have a very simple I have only three times I have defied my party over three line whip a over race relations in the 1960s two over the poll tax in the 1980s and three over article 50 and the decision to leave Europe and my answer is very simple in the end if you're in politics you have to decide why and I'm in politics because I believe that my country's self-interest as I interpreted is bigger than my party and so if I'm going to respect my own integrity and my own commitment to this country which obviously I feel strongly about in the end I cannot put my party's interests above the nation's interests and every conservative MP is going to have to weigh those decisions I don't want to obsess with personality politics but it's coming up on facebook as well and I've got two questions from Tom and Jill earlier although my screens are not going dead and that's a totally different subject they've asked you about Scottish independence and about our first minister Nicholas Sturgeon well you'd be a brave man to venture into Scottish politics about which I cannot profess to be in any way an expert and I'm not much given to the sort of personalities you know Nicholas Sturgeon is first minister of this important country and she's democratically elected and I have to respect that I have no reason at all to think I wouldn't have a perfectly good personal relationship if I met her I don't think I have but she is to me on the left of politics and I doubt very much if we would find much to agree about not independence I am appalled by the prospect of the fracturing of the united kingdom which is a sort of mini fracturing of brexit it is the same argument and we are I mean I don't want to get tear jerking about this but if I look at the record of the British Empire and the British Commonwealth and the incredible strengths which Scotland has contributed to this two 300 year human achievement the idea of fracturing it I find unbelievable great entrepreneurs great engineers great scientists great politicians no it's just unthinkable there is one thing and again I'm with great hesitancy do I say this if I have one question I would ask about quotes independence is this really substituting Edinburgh for Whitehall and substituting Edinburgh for Whitehall with the centralism sort of moved a few hundred miles north will that really change anything very much in Scotland the report that I wrote the the report that I wrote called no stone unturned dealt with this issue in an English context and what I have been arguing for for many years now is the recreation of the power centres of the 18th century and if I was looking at the Scottish economy in that context I would be asking myself about Glasgow Edinburgh Aberdeen Dundee and whether they are being devolved power to whether they are being recreated as the dynamics that they were when those cities were at their heyday and if you ask that question about England then you will see the mayoral authorities which we are now creating and to me the thing that has done a great deal to undermine the strength of this country is the functional divisions of Whitehall and my question is are the functional divisions now replicated in Edinburgh but the ministerial careers the official careers the fragmentation of power and decision making means that nobody is looking at the place they're looking at housing at education at roads at industrial policy at defence health whatever it may be and this I take it to the most deprived estates some of those estates I saw for the first time close to in Liverpool huge sums of money spent on the most deprived communities big money big budgets and there'll be a health worker and there'll be a policeman and there'll be a teacher and there will be an employment person and there will be social workers and there will be this and there'll be that and the interesting thing is two things they never meet and no one ever talks to the tenants about whether the money could be better spent well turn that into the local economy which is the dynamic aggregated into the nation and who's actually responsible for the dynamic of the components of the Scottish economy that these would be the questions to which I sought answers but if you think it can be done by someone in Edinburgh concentrating on the functional divisions of government I just agree it never was done like that it was done by communities of men and women self motivated self interested locally aware in touch not by great bureaucracies sending down conformist patterns of behaviour relevant to a compromise they've worked out centrally and implying it imposing it on different economies good news is you've animated some questions now from the audience so I think I just saw hanker up here it just I think yes I think maybe the microphone will come on so I just try and project yes it has on what I call the Gina Miller case and article 50 and also on the role of MPs having substantial earnings from second jobs and one thinks about journalistic earnings and the role of Ipsa in all of that and Ipsa having a board which seems totally confined within the M25 the first one about the Gina Miller case the article 50 case and the Gina Miller court case yes she was the lady who took on challenge the and one yes and the second one being the journalists the idea of outside income the second one I understand fully well well the general Miller case I think I mean was a perfectly legitimate activity from a courageous lady and she won and I salute the endeavor of course I'm on her side you won't be surprised I said that outside income absolutely essential it is very important that politicians represent the nation and if you say we are going to have a professional politician limited to what they can earn as a member of parliament you are by definition excluding entrepreneurs now you may not like entrepreneurs and not all of them are likeable but the experience they bring is an essential ingredient in the management of a complex economy and if you don't allow people to earn what they can legitimately earn you will exclude a certain attitude a certain experience and that would be a pity so it's a choice you if you want people I mean what members of parliament get today about 70 000 a year something of that sort okay now I that's a lot more than the average earnings and a lot of people have entitled to say well it's more than I get and then why should they and all that sort of stuff and I understand all of that that human resentments and the human envy and all that but if you want to limit your representation to people who can not who can only earn 70 000 a year you are making a decision to exclude a certain talent pool and I think you do so to your own disadvantage another question just over here the gentleman here today we live our lives through the prism of social media and twitter and even right now every word and everything that we're we're looking at has been recorded live and going out through the internet is there anything left that we don't yet know about those frantic weeks around about late 1990 about the leadership challenge and mrs Thatcher's demise that hasn't really come out and I appreciate I may well be people alive today that you don't want to compromise but I just wonder how much more there is still to know about that period yes basically saying that do we know all that we could know about the leadership challenge of 1990 or because these days politics is played out in the public domain fully but 1990 perhaps it still wasn't and are there things you know about the plotting and machinations behind the scenes that we don't know about or is it all now been published I think it's all in the public domain I mean perhaps I don't know but but I I the best of my knowledge that it's all been covered pretty in considerable detail at the time you were you were the victim several times I mean I don't want to get into personality politics again but with you were actually on the receiving end of number 10 briefings bernie dingham I think he called one of your colleagues john biffin semi detached but I think you were the first one to be called not one of us this was this was um westland well before you asked if your question had been no this is the leadership but in general under the Thatcher administration the number 10 machine was briefing against you I mean you were described as not one of us well I certainly wasn't so I mean that's no problem at all to me but I was not on the wet side I was in my own middle ground as we've covered but but but I don't think there's anything new that come will come out of the the challenge in 1990 the westland affair that certainly has been there was a criminal conspiracy to support Sikorski there's no question about it it was never investigated by the police and there is more to come there's no doubt yes gentlemen there if you were prime minister today how would you deal with the two appalling presidents in washington and mosco so what do you make of president trump and what do you make of president putain well I don't empathize with mr trump I don't have a high regard for him I don't like his methods I don't like his policy he happens to be president of the most important nation and an important ally of this country and I would not see my job as prime minister to go around alienating a relationship which has to be maintained and if fractured restored so care would be but I hope there's only one prime minister that has stood up to an American effectively since the war Harold Wilson over Vietnam so you know if you have any sense of history you will understand what you're saying if you say I'm going to stand up and defy an American president maybe but you got to know what you're doing so this is you're hearing a real politic answer I'm not prepared to say that I would be in the business of you know confronting an American president I'd be looking for ways of finding my way through which is what most British prime ministers do mr putain well I have I have a look his behavior over the novel chart poisoning is wholly unacceptable it is black and white and the story so to speak his the the GRU has been turned into a world laughing stock over the last few days over the Salisbury tourists who've now this poor lady the grandmother who's identified one of them as a major in the GRU when the Russians have been trying to dismiss it all I mean this is humiliation for the Russians and and so one must be appalled by that and now there's talk about the Dutch exploits so you've got a very difficult and pretty black and white situation you're dealing with I have to say that in my look ahead at the world that most of you will inhabit I think we've got more in common with the Russians than against them it depends where you think the big trigger points of the world are I don't believe that they are the Russian tanks moving west the Russians have moved their tanks a long way east since the closure of the collapse of the Soviet Union they'll fiddle around with marginal threats and this sort of thing but it seems to me a they can't afford it and b they've readjusted to the motherland and to Russia as the pride of their nationalist instincts but there was Hitler and there was Napoleon and they'll never forget that huge western armies they've got China on the other side they're getting on a bit better now but it's not always been like that but here the soft underbelly they have got the muslim dominated republics and then you've got israel now to me that's the focus of the worst dangers for the next half century I'm not going to predict how or where or why but that's the where the instability is that's where the the dangers are to me and I think that is the same danger that infects Russia as much as it does us and so I think British foreign policy should be trying to build bridges to Russia now that doesn't mean you accept or give in their right to come and do the terrible things they've done but you you ask the long-term view and you know the Ukraine the Crimea that really is Russian territory they haven't put their troops into the Ukraine which they could have done they could have taken the Ukraine they'd have been mad but they haven't and I don't think they will I think Yeltsin should never have done what he did with the Ukraine so I would my my long-term strategic objective if I was in that position which you all know I'm not would be to build bridges with the Russians now I was going to take another question but I'm afraid we're just running out of time now so so that's always the way everyone warms up and has the questions but we're going to be moving down shortly to the government we maybe have a chance then I'm just going to ask one last question just then you revealed in your book that your diagnosis quite late in life with as a dyslexic but you seem to have written enough a lot of books for someone with dyslexia do you have any any plans for any more yes I'm working on a book called ride the fastest snail I said at the very beginning there were two sorts of people in life we had the the entrenchers and the adventurers but my observation if if if you were even younger than you are and you were asking for my advice about how to succeed you know I would say to you well ride the fastest snail don't be upfront but always be there you know when the crunch comes when the moment comes don't be the guy the focal of attention be the guy standing behind don't take the flack don't be the one they're all criticising be the one with the constructive suggestion as how to build bridges how to unite together be there ride the fastest snail thank you very much so you've beaten me to it there but I want to thank you Lord Heslund I want to thank you particularly all for coming in to join us this evening and I hope you will continue to join us in the garden lobby for actually what is the official launch of the festival politics and we've got several events coming up we've got dame margot hodge coming to join us so tom divine the booker award winning novelist ben ochre and many more so I hope but most of all it requires your participation and hopefully I have a chance to ask the questions then you didn't get now but I'd like to end this part by asking you to join me in thanking Lord Michael Heslund for joining us this evening